Last year’s sequestration cut $1.2 million from the local HOPWA budget. HOPWA is expecting another $1 million cut next year.

Ryan White Care Act Re-authorization

On September 3, the Fort Lauderdale City Council was to vote on a resolution urging re-authorization of the Ryan White Care (RWC) Act with strategic changes, but Mayor Seller asked for more feedback from the community and rescheduled the vote for September 17 at 6 pm.

The floor was opened for discussion of issues related to the re-authorization. This discussion functioned to obtain feedback about the reauthorization resolution and had no decision making or representative function.

Four main themes emerged among others:

Fear that drawing attention to the need for Ryan White Care renewal would attract the attention of deficit hawks.

The resolution as written made no mention of Florida’s refusal to expand Medicaid. See related article “The Future of Ryan White Care “.

The City of Fort Lauderdale administers HOPWA not Ryan White Care programs, yet the resolution makes no mention of HOPWA.

The process of putting these resolutions forward failed to include significant community input.

A committee was set up to summarize the discussion for formal presentation.

The Department of Health will be issuing requests for proposals for HIV service delivery soon. These proposals will be due in early November.

Ryan White Care service providers and consumers will present and discuss how the Affordable Care Act will affect HIV treatment services at the African American Research Library on 2650 Sistrunk Blvd. on September 24 from 5 pm to 8 pm.

About SFAN

South Florida AIDS Network is a monthly meeting of HIV treatment service providers in Broward.

The meetings are open to the public and people are encouraged to attend. Meetings occur on the first Friday of every month at 10 am except for March and October when the meetings occur at 6 pm on the first Thursday.